


Vicissitude

by sunflashes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflashes/pseuds/sunflashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim takes it upon himself to reinvent the mirror, to strip Sherlock bare and cover him in the brushstrokes of flowering bruises to prove to him, once and for all, that he is nothing less than what he is, nothing less than a masterpiece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vicissitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epistolic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/gifts).



**{Now}**

It is not so much you have taken everything from me and you will pay as it is wordless and heartless and sudden. 

There are no codas, there are no encores, there is no prologue, there is just this, and there is just now, and there is just the fall. 

\---

**{Then}**

There are options, and then there are _options_ , not options at all, more along the lines of bitter, last-minute choices, when adrenaline is screaming and eyes are rolling back and there is not one single other way out. 

Much in that way of a raw, screamed confession to stop a bullet, a name whispered to halt a knife blade, their lips meet, a collision to rival the Van Buren _fucking_ supernova, and Sherlock sinks his teeth into Jim's neck, Jim blossoms for him like a Venus flytrap, all disheveled Westwood and calculating eyes and dangerously warm, soft lips. 

Jim even kisses like a criminal, like he is trying to steal the secrets hidden underneath Sherlock's tongue, between his teeth, in the back of his throat. 

Damned if Sherlock lets him. 

\---

**{Before Then}**

Before all the madness, before all the fame (infamy), Sherlock Holmes was merely extraordinary. He sat on a throne in his ivory tower and condemned humanity as it crawled about below him in the muck. Jim Moriarty (then Morgan) had seen it in the schoolyard, (then Morris) had seen it in the slides under the microscope in Biology and in the tainted water of the swimming pool during high school, (then Morse) had seen it in the way he couldn't even look a girl in the eye as she leaned up to kiss him at university, but now (when Jim is finally Moriarty, his birthright) Sherlock Holmes looks at John fucking Watson as though he were a precious statue, carved by Michelangelo out of an amalgam of spun sugar and the purest marble. Sherlock Holmes has been tricked, duped by this mere doctor with a degree in meatball surgery, and Jim cannot have that. 

The worst kind of travesty occurs when the Seraphim peers into the looking glass and refuses to recognise his own divine beauty. 

Jim takes it upon himself to reinvent the mirror, to peel away the onion layers of Sherlock's taciturn acceptance of normality, to strip him bare and cover him in the brushstrokes of flowering bruises to prove to him, once and for all, that he is nothing, _nothing less_ than what he is, nothing less than a masterpiece.  
\---

**{Then}**

What follows the kiss(es) is a crushing blow to Jim's solar plexus, causing him to crumple to his designer knees.

"It… took… you… long… enough…!" Jim wheezes, managing to smile even in paroxysms of pain. 

"I know what I want." Sherlock says coldly, blood snaking down his chin from the bitten tear in his bottom lip.

"And… Let me guess… this isn't it." Jim's breathing is returning to him, he steadies himself with a hand on the seat of what Sherlock knows to be John's chair, the one with the Union Jack cushion (Sherlock's stomach roils).

"In spades." 

Jim stands shakily and uses Sherlock's shoulder for balance. It is an acid test, and the simple fact that Sherlock lets him means that he has the upper hand. 

"No, no, no, no, no." Jim coos, swaying forward so that his forehead drops to Sherlock's other shoulder. Sherlock stands stiffly, back meeting 221b's mantle at a right angle. Jim raises his head slightly, breathing out against Sherlock's neck, lips touching right underneath his ear and feeling the muscles tighten against the touch underneath that milky, soft skin. 

"NO!" He screams into Sherlock's ear and Sherlock recoils like a shot, shoves him away, stumbles backward and crashes to the floor, unable to find purchase to stop him tumbling. 

"No." Jim drops to his knees and pounces on Sherlock before he can maneuver away. He drops onto Sherlock's legs hard, pinning them down, and holds Sherlock's hands fast to the hardwood, his nails digging grooves into Sherlock's wrists. Sherlock fights, but he doesn't _fight_ , and Jim knows that he has won. 

"This is _exactly_ what you want."

The conflict in Sherlock's eyes, the valiant, heroic struggle between the exhausted armies of good and evil blurs just for a second when he looks at Jim, really looks at him, and everything blurs into distorted shades of lavender and gray, charcoal gray, and the deep brown of Jim's eyes swallows him whole as he surrenders to the lewd tenderness of his lips. 

\---

**{Now}**

Sherlock knows that he is not on the side of the angels, because if he were, they would have caught him as he fell.


End file.
